Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War (Vintage International)

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It's the kind of book you want to press into the hands of world leaders before they embark on some unnecessary, avoidable war. Is it any wonder that these boys, at least the ones who managed to get through the war as Stephen did, were left indelibly marked by tragedy, grief, and the smell of death. I found several reasons to entitle the book this way, not least Stephen's declaration regarding his feelings about birds and the reasons behind those feelings. My wife proclaims this to be her most favourite read, and were she to have typed this review, it would have attracted an easy five stars. As Katherena and her mother move inland from the seaside, we are reminded of the rhythm of the seasons and the beauties of nature that are all around.

Birdsong by Julie Flett | Goodreads Birdsong by Julie Flett | Goodreads

Something did not quite add up in her calculations, though it was possibly her arithmetic that was to blame. The romance is quickly introduced and proceeds with relative alacrity, but the essence of it left me unconvinced.There is a very powerful understanding of the futility of war and its effects on everyone involved, regardless of national allegiance. In the face of absolute horror and probable death, he does not allow himself to think about love, or what life after this conflict could even look like. Birdsong was listed in The Telegraph as one of the most consistently high selling books of 1998–2008, continuously in the top 5,000 sales figures.

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks | Goodreads

This is a book that will stay with me for a long time as it has all the elements of a 5 star read for me.Faulks delivers a moving and shocking account of Stephen and his love affair and the trials and hardships of trench life and it seems as though at times you are seeing this all through the characters eyes. The implication is that they are curiously dull, or so bovinely indifferent, that such basic facts simply never came up in their family life. i don't understand why it has so much critical acclaim, i don't understand why i'm studying it at A Level, and i don't understand why it's one of the nation's favourite novels. Keep it on your windowsill for the whole family to enjoy and see who becomes the bird song expert first. I love the prose style, the narration of the audiobook by Peter Firth is excellent and the events already have me terribly curious.

Birdsong in a Time of Silence by Steven Lovatt review Birdsong in a Time of Silence by Steven Lovatt review

Your skin will crawl with lice, you will feel the slip and muck of blood and brains underneath your boots; hell, you'll feel your toes crumbling with trenchfoot inside your rotting boots. Michael Gorra, a professor of English literature, argues that Faulks seeks to demonstrate that "the past can be recovered, its code can be broken; it can be used to add meaning to contemporary life. The production, specially adapted by Rachel Wagstaff and featuring Max Bowden, Stephen Boxer, Tom Kay, Madeleine Knight and Tim Treloar with narration by Sebastian Faulks himself, was released online via www.

All war is hideous, but there is something about this war-the number of casualties, the waves and waves of young men released onto the battlefields as cannon fodder, the squalor of the trenches, the chemicals-it was a war that obliterated a generation. But Faulks gives Elizabeth a strong voice and her own personal dilemmas that bring the existential quest for meaning and truth full circle. Weir, Stephen's closest friend, is eventually killed by a sniper's bullet while in a trench out on the front line.

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks: Summary and reviews - BookBrowse

Among so many deaths, the possible death of this eight-year-old boy, whom we know only through the character's intense affection for him, is the one that affects us.As a child he had been awestruck by the starlings that roosted in Birmingham during the winter: “They swirled and pulsed in the sky-space between concrete towers as though a dark dough of poppyseeds was being stretched and kneaded by invisible hands. The prose, which is often flabby at the seams, is filled with my short phrases with faked originality and stunted aesthetics: slipshod attempts are juxtaposing and reconciling the ugliness of war and the beauty of passion. In its ability to spark forgotten memories and connect us to nature, birdsong is, says Lovatt, both “plainly mystical and profoundly ordinary”. When Jack receives a subsequent letter from his wife, he keeps it unopened during his next mission, as if keeping his son alive that bit longer.